Chapter 3

BOJANGLES met me at the car, all tongue and wet slobbery love. At that moment I could have ridden him into the house. No one was home, and I was so grateful. I didn’t need any more witnesses to my pathetic state. I just wanted to go have a meltdown.

My clothes felt oppressive and sticky. I stripped on the way up the stairs, and was down to my bra and panties and almost out of them as I walked toward my bed.

“Nice.”

I whirled to see Alex draped in the chair by the window. His old spot. He had a half smile on his face but new interest in his eyes as he panned down.

“Shit!”

I stumbled backward over a pair of shoes, missed the bed, and landed flat on my ass on the floor. I yanked at a corner of comforter and pulled half the bedding over me while he tried really hard not to laugh.

“Damn it, Alex, you can’t do that.”

He grinned, and my insides went all wobbly. “Do what?”

“Just—be there like that. Without warning.”

“Never bothered you before.”

“Well, I was a kid then. Probably didn’t do much parading around in the buff, either, I don’t think.” I blew out a breath to calm my heart rate. “Oh, that’s a lie. I probably wished you’d catch me.”

His eyebrows raised. “What?”

I struggled to sit normally while still covered. “Hey, I was a hormone-ridden teenager and not exactly on anyone’s A-list.”

He grimaced. “God, please stop there.”

I laughed. “Why?”

He shook his head and held a hand out. “Because that’s just—no.”

“What—you were hot. You don’t think girls fantasize about—”

Alex stood up and waved both hands at me, his face taking on a look like he’d just inhaled vomit. “I don’t want to know this. That’s just—” He did a body shiver.

I grinned. “You never thought about me like that?”

He turned a look on me. “When you were a kid? Do I look like a pervert to you?”

I sighed dramatically. “Joking, Alex, you can quit the panic attack.” He rubbed at his face and sat back down. I had to laugh, in spite of my predicament. “Look at you, all shivery. You sure weren’t that turned off when I walked in here.”

“You’re an adult. And half naked. It’s legal.”

“Well, unless you plan on watching me sit on the floor all evening, I need to get up,” I said, waving a corner of comforter.

He gave me a long look and then put his head down. “Get dressed. I’ll wait.”

I smiled and took my time pulling clothes from the dresser to put on. Mess with me, will you?

“Okay.”

He sat back and tilted his head to one side as I dumped my bag out, found some aspirin, and downed it with the previous night’s bottle of water that sat half full on the nightstand.

“Bad day?”

“Surreal.”

“Tell me.”

My head was too clogged. The room felt still and jittery at the same time, like the air was nervous. I tugged on the ceiling fan cord to stir up some breeze.

“Do you know where Riley is?”

Minimal movement of his head. “She didn’t check in.”

“Alex, please don’t mess with me today.”

He sat forward again and rested his forearms on his knees.

“I haven’t seen her. Your dad is out. Now breathe and talk to me.”

I dropped forward onto the bed on my stomach and grabbed a small pillow to hug. I swear I was sixteen again.

“Mom?”

I dropped my head into the pillow. Correction. She was sixteen.

“Mom? You upstairs?”

My head jerked upward. “Go! She can see you.”

Alex stood with a tired sigh and walked around a corner of the room and was gone. He never just went poof. He always walked away.

“What the hell?” Riley said just outside the door.

“I’m here, boog.”

She entered holding the clothes I’d discarded on the way up, looking around the room.

“Do I want to know?”

I shook my head. “I was hot and disgusted and couldn’t get them off fast enough.”

“Okay.” She dropped them as if they were covered in slime and flopped onto the bed next to me.

I handed her a pillow. “What’s up?”

“This town is so lame. I don’t know how you grew up here.”

“I was lame.”

She rubbed her eyes. “I walked around today, it’s like freakin’ Mayberry.”

I laughed bitterly. “Not quite.”

“Seriously, there’s nothing to do.”

“You know the rules. Keep saying that and I’ll find something for you to do.”

The famous eye roll and she flipped over on her back to stare at the ceiling.

“I’m sure Pop could use a duster, maybe a raker, most definitely a mower—” I began.

“Think he’d pay me?”

I glared at her. “He’s feeding you. You have a bed and a shower. That’s payment enough.”

She focused back on the ceiling. “So what’s got you so grumpy today?”

“Irony.” That earned me a blank look. “I went off to college for higher education so I would never have to grovel at this town’s feet again.”

“And now you’re groveling?”

I closed my eyes as my brain put the words together. “Got a job at the Bait-n-Feed.”

Her face scrunched up. “Wow.”

“Yeah. At six in the morning.”

“For real?”

“Doesn’t get more real than that.”

She fiddled with her pillow. “Sorry, Mom.”

“It’s life, boog. Not always how we plan it.” Sounded all parental, but I didn’t buy it. I thought it pretty much sucked.

She sat up. “Well, don’t wake me up. That’s still night as far as I’m concerned.”

“Maybe I’ll come climb on your bed and put my makeup on,” I said, shoving her.

“You need makeup for that place?”

I dropped my face into the pillow. “True,” I mumbled. “Maybe I’ll just stay in my pajamas. Save time.”

She shoved at my arm and I felt her get up and leave. If I hadn’t been starving, I would have stayed in that spot all night.

“Alex, I don’t suppose you deliver?” I attempted.

Nothing. He was gone. Oh well, it was always a fifty-fifty shot.

MY alarm clock sung at five a.m., but I’d stared at it through two, three, and four as well. I’d forgotten the energy of that house. The feeling of never being alone in my own skin. I cleaned up, threw on jeans and a stretchy T-shirt, brushed my hair into a ponytail, and called it good. Then I went for a little mascara and lip gloss only because my inner girly girl said to quit being pathetic and step it up a little.

I backed up and surveyed myself in the big, oval gold-leaf mirror that had hung in my bathroom since I was seven. My outer forty-year-old told me I needed some powder, maybe some Botox, a little Sheetrock spackle.

I smelled coffee, which meant Dad was up. As if on cue, Bojangles bounded in all a-wiggle and stuck his nose right up my ass.

“Okay!” I moved quickly. “I’m coming.”

He followed me down just to be sure.

“Hey, sweetheart.” Dad looked up from the crossword puzzle he pulled from the newspaper. Already in his blue hat.

“Morning.” I headed to the coffeepot. “Although Riley says this doesn’t qualify as morning.”

He chuckled. “I used to agree with that. Now, I’m up before five whether I want to be or not.” He pointed to the cabinet. “I got you some creamer. I know you like that better than milk.”

I chuckled silently. “Thanks, Dad.”

I sank heavily into the worn wooden chair, as Dad peered at me over his reading glasses and set his pencil down.

“You look like you’ve been beaten with a stick.”

“Not yet, that’s later.”

He sat back and took his glasses off.

“Dani, I know coming back here wasn’t in your life plan. And this job is ridiculously beneath you.” He rested his arms back on the table. “But, honey, this is temporary. You’ll get your feet back under you. Life’s not perfect.”

“That much I know.”

“Do you? Because you sure keep expecting it to be.”

I frowned into my coffee. “I just get tired, Dad.”

“We all get tired, honey.” He got up and poured himself another cup, then turned slightly, his thick white eyebrows raised. “But you have to put that weight down sometimes. You carry it around with you twenty-four-seven.”

His chair scraped the wooden floor as he sat back down, and I closed my eyes.

“I’m sorry. I’m just a little bitter right now, okay? I just have to get through some things and then I’ll be fine. I’ll make peace with it.”

He squeezed my hand. “What about Riley?”

“I’m terrified.”

“Of?”

“Of my crap landing on her. Of this town drowning her in it.”

He toyed with the rim of his cup. “What about—”

“Yeah. Now she’s got her own. And people will look for something odd because of me.”

“So, don’t you think we need to talk to her?”

I rubbed my eyes. “Yeah, that seems to be the popular vote.”

“Or lock her in the attic.”

I smiled in spite of the turmoil sucking my brain cells. “Riley would just carve a hole in the roof.”

MARG was making a second pot of coffee when I arrived. Or it could have been the fifth for all I knew. She gave me a once-over when I walked in and chuckled as she turned back to the coffeepot.

“Wasn’t sure you’d show.”

“Why’s that?”

“You weren’t exactly doing cartwheels about it yesterday.”

I laughed and panned the room. “I’m too old for cartwheels, Marg.” I met her eyes. “I’m here because I have to be. I need the job.”

Her sharp gaze narrowed for a moment, then nodded almost imperceptibly. “Fair enough.” She lifted the hinged countertop piece to allow me in. “Come on back here.”

Guess I passed.

“We have two guides, and they’ll be here shortly. You’ll go out with one this afternoon and the other tomorrow.”

“Just two?”

“Well, there’s Bob that makes bait runs every morning, and technically could do any of the river with his eyes closed if he wanted to, but that’s not his thing.”

“Okay.”

“He’s not much of a people person. You’ll see later.”

I ran a hand along the counter as I panned the walls so thick with merchandise, I couldn’t tell what color the room was. “So he’s already out today?”

“By five every morning; that’s why I’m here. He lives next door.”

I vaguely recalled a mobile home and a golf cart next to the store. I smiled. “Why not just give him a key?”

“He steals.” The coffeepot beeped. “You want coffee?”

I blinked. “Um, sure.”

“Cups are underneath. Help yourself.”

It went on from there. I learned where the fishing licenses were and how to do them. I learned how to run the register, look up and post the daily tides. Sabine Pass is a saltwater connection between the Neches River and the Gulf of Mexico, so where many rivers aren’t affected by tides, ours is. I was shown where the guide schedules were (on the wall), where their rate charts were (in a drawer), and all about the five different types of deer corn. Okay, maybe that’s an exaggeration, but I don’t think so.

And bird feed. And garden supplies. And of course, all the fishing gear a small country could possibly need.

The phone interrupted her spiel on jigs, sinker weights, and swivels, and I took the opportunity to find the bathroom, which was down a hall marked by door beads. At least it wasn’t fish hooks.

When I returned, Marg told me that I would work till three every day so to bring my lunch or eat chips out of the machine. And that after a couple of days I’d be on my own after twelve, because that would be her new hours.

“We close at three?” I asked as I counted suet trays.

“No, but the new owner comes in from noon till six. Noon to three gets busy, needs two people. He’ll make sure the bait’s okay for the night.”

I turned midway through counting. “The bait?” I checked out the multicolored wall of faux fish. “Do they do something?”

Marg laughed like you do when a child says something cute. “Not that bait, back here.”

She headed down the same hallway, past the bathroom, which she pointed out wasn’t open to the public, through another door to a small room that opened to the outside and reeked so badly I stepped backward.

“Oh—wow.”

“You get used to it,” Marg threw over her shoulder. Two large vats filled with what appeared to be thousands of mud minnows and live shrimp squatted like giant moonshine stills. These I’d fished with as a kid, but I’d evidently either blocked out or entirely missed the LIVE BAIT sign out front.

“Bob pretty much keeps this all maintained,” Marg hollered over the noise of the aerator churning oxygen through the water. “You just have to come fill people’s buckets.”

I stared at the scene in front of me and crossed my arms to keep the sanity in. “Groovy.”

There were a couple of random customers that morning, but when the bell jingled later and Marg told me to handle it alone, I bit at my lip. Especially when I saw it was a girl I knew from school. Sort of.

She smiled sweetly at Marg and I remembered that same smile next to five other clones, giggling at me behind my back while their boyfriends openly leered behind theirs. I may have been too weird to talk to, but I still had tits and an ass and they all wanted a piece of the unknown.

“Hi, Marg.”

Marg looked unaffected by the charm. “Lisa. What can I help you with?”

Another smile and a glance at me. Curiosity. Vague recognition. A plus B equals—bing!

“Um—” The gaze flickered back to Marg. “Fifty-pound bag of wild bird feed and twenty-five-pound bag of cracked corn.” She flitted a hand toward the door. My son’s out there to help load.”

The focus came back to me, much to my joy. The smile again. Unsure.

“Dani Shane?”

Act surprised. “Yes?”

“It is you. Wow.” She laughed, and I watched as memory dawned. It was in the eyebrow. “Do you remember me? Lisa Lowe? We graduated together.”

We did nothing together, but being a grown-up now, I pushed away the anxiety that broke me out in a sweat the instant she walked in. Instead, I feigned thinking about it. Former popular kids still need that rush, and I wasn’t about to give it to her.

“Doesn’t ring a bell, but your face does look kinda familiar.” I smiled back. “How are you?”

She blinked rapidly, obviously thrown off by someone not remembering her glory days as one of Shelby Pruitt’s groupies.

“Good!” All the teeth came back on cue. “Really good. I’m Lisa Marlow now, married Dr. Marlow’s son, Carson. Do you remember him? He was a year ahead of us.” She fidgeted with a bracelet and tucked her hair back. Twice.

I smiled back as I refused to remember him and shook my head. “Honestly, that was too long ago. I do good to remember last week,” I said, laughing, forcing her to laugh with me.

“Well—yeah, I guess. Me, too.” Another laugh, although not a convincing one. “And we hung in different circles, so—”

I nodded. She nodded. We were bonding, I suppose.

“So, you’re back here now?”

“Yes. Me and my daughter.”

Eyes lit up. “Oh! How old is your daughter?”

“She’s sixteen.”

“So she’ll be a junior? So will my son.” Lisa pointed at the door where the elusive son supposedly waited anxiously to load bags. “Maybe they can meet up this summer so she’ll have a friend to start school.”

It was everything in my power not to burst out laughing at that one. “Absolutely. I’m sure she’d appreciate that. It’s so hard to start over, especially at that age.” Or mine.

“Oh, I can just imagine.” I saw the questions whiz through her little bottle-blonde brain.

“So, what made you work here?” she whispered after Marg had left earshot. “I mean, didn’t you have some big-shot job in Dallas?”

The hair on the back of my neck suddenly stood on end, my neon sign that a spirit was nearby. When my heart rate sped up as well, I knew it wasn’t just any spirit. Great.

“Um—yeah,” I said, wanting to look around but stopped myself. “Layoffs. And in that world, when you make too much, no one under that wants to hire you because they know it’s temporary.”

I knew that was condescending, but I couldn’t help myself. Ugh. She nodded and looked sympathetic, although I knew she didn’t really understand. Staying in Bethany, there’s no way she could.

“So after a while, I had to suck it up. Had Riley to think of.”

Her son came in and waved. A big guy, six foot–ish and buff.

“Mom? It’s in the car.”

“Okay, coming.”

“Ask his age, Dani,” Alex said to my left, and I had to struggle not to jump and turn his way. I didn’t need that.

“Uh—wow, he’s only sixteen?”

She blinked and licked her lips. “Yeah, well, he—we held him back in junior high to help him out a little.”

I nodded the mom nod of compassion. “Oh, okay.”

“Well, good to see you again, Dani,” she said, now needing to exit before she divulged any other not-so-glorious tidbits.

“You, too.”

“And I can keep my ears open; if I hear of anything better, I’ll let you know,” she whispered conspiratorially.

I just smiled. She left. I blew out a breath slowly and looked around for Marg, who hadn’t come back in yet.

“What are you doing here, Alex?” I whispered toward the counter.

“Come to check on you,” he said over my shoulder.

“Well, quit. I don’t need anyone being reminded about me.”

“You needed to put that bimbo in her place.”

I chuckled. “Yeah, that part was kinda cool.” I touched my hair. “But I wish I’d gotten a little more ready this morning. I look like a ragdoll.”

He leaned over on the counter in front of me so I had to look at him. “You blow her away just getting out of bed.”

My stomach twisted like a teenager with a crush. How did he have that effect on me?

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Have fun,” he said with a wicked grin, and he disappeared down the hall.

I scarfed down a bag of chips just as one of my mentors arrived. He was at least six foot five with whacked-out curly red hair peeking from beneath a Dallas Cowboys cap. His face glowed almost as red as his hair, and his belly strained at the buttons so hard I cringed every time he moved.

Marg introduced me as Nathaniel’s daughter, and I held out my hand.

“Hi, Dani Shane.”

He did that barely-grab-the-fingertips thing that men sometimes do to shake a woman’s hand. Revolting.

“Hank Turner, sugar.” Oh yeah, that made it better. “Didn’t know Nathaniel had a little girl.”

That made my heart hurt a little for my dad.

“I’ve been living in Dallas for the last twenty-one years, so—”

Hank took off his cap and scratched through his curls. “Oh, well, I’ve only been around for a couple of years myself, and usually only see your dad when we’re launching or docking. So what brought you back here?”

God, evidently. “Life just worked out that way,” I said, grinning.

“Well, sugar, I look forward to showing you the south end tomorrow.” He winked.

Ugh, a winker. I couldn’t stand men who wink. Except Alex. Somehow, my clothes wanted to fall off when he did it.

“Sounds like a plan.”

“It’s a date then, sweetheart,” he said as he pointed a finger at me. “Hey! What’s a minnow and a flounder have in common?”

“Jesus,” Marg muttered.

I just raised my eyebrows and smiled.

“They’re both dinner for somebody.” He slapped the counter with a big beefy hand, and his whole belly shook with squeaky laughter over his joke. His face turned even redder.

“Cute,” I said, winking. Why the hell not.

“Oh, I got a lot more. But I’ll save them for tomorrow.”

Lucky me. “Good deal.”

“Not for you,” came another voice I didn’t recognize and briefly hoped was alive. It was.

Hank wheeled around as what I’d call the anti-Hank strolled through the door. The smaller, older man gripped Hank’s hand and slapped him on the back, then turned to Marg and myself.

“Ladies.”

Marg laughed, and he pretended insult.

“You’re so full of shit, Jiminy.”

He shook my hand for real, and I liked him instantly.

“You would be Dani.”

A laugh escaped my throat as I tried to figure out what was familiar about him. “Yes, sir, I believe I would be. And you’re—Jiminy?”

His eyes narrowed in his weathered face and sparkled with amusement. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You can call him Cricket,” Hank said, sidestepping.

“Not if you want me to answer,” he said, turning on Hank. Hank laughed and held his big palms up as Jiminy turned back to me. “Last name doesn’t matter. Jiminy works just fine.”

The bell jingled behind them and I looked over their shoulders to see two guys walk in with a five-gallon bucket. Oh joy. Everybody did the manly shake and pump, exchanged greetings, found out how the kids were, threw out all the appropriate fishing lingo on what was biting where.

It’s a small town. Of course they knew them. I knew them, too. Once upon a time, they were the leering boyfriends.